Makronissos

What I can see

This oblong island is called Makronissos (=long island) due to its shape. The ground is dry and the water not abundant. Today it is practically uninhabited, with only five people living here. However, the most important aspect is that it is itself a monument of modern Greek history and therefore buildings on the island are maintained without new alterations. It was a concentration camp of “national reform” and a place of torture for political prisoners, communists, deserters and those with “questionable opinions” during the Greek civil war and the first post-civil war years.

What I can't see

In ancient times it was called Helen, in the Middle Ages it was a base for pirates and later it was a jail for Turkish prisoners during the Balkan Wars (1912-1913). A decade later it became a quarantine station for the Greek refugees from the Black Sea and other areas of Asia Minor. However, it has been historically famous for the “Massacre of Makronissos” during the Greek civil war. After protests, which erupted after a compulsory church attendance was forced onto sick detainees, an armed attack against the insurgents followed, with five dead and ten wounded. The administration attributed the deaths to the communists, and the commander in charge gave a five-minute deadline to surrender. By the end of this deadline, beatings and shootings followed with hundreds of dead prisoners, the corpses of whom (according to witnesses) were thrown into the sea. The then press talked about “troublemaker communists” and a “communist bug” that infects humans, while the guards enforced “order” and “cure”.

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